BOOKS Stricken by sleep The Sleeping Beauties

Mark Greener explores a new study of the psychosomatic condition where groups of people are afflicted by the same illness

and Other Stories of Mystery Illness

Suzanne O’Sullivan

Picador 2021

Hb, 336pp, £16.99, ISBN 9781529010558

Forteans are fascinated by culture-bound syndromes, outbreaks of functional neurological disorder (previously called mass hysteria) and exotic, emerging and enigmatic diseases. Many of these “mystery” ailments are psychosomatic: real symptoms with roots in psychology or behaviour, rather than physical changes.

Indeed, up to a third of patients attending neurology clinics suffer from psychosomatic conditions. Neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan regularly sees patients lose consciousness because of their psychological distress.

In this lively book, part travelogue, part case history compendium, part polemic, O’Sullivan offers insightful examples of the way in which social and cultural factors affect biology and psychology to generate psychosomatic and functional neurological disorders.

The title refers to children in Sweden, generally girls, who fall into a seeming coma and show “a total indifference to pain and pleasure, a complete freedom from emotion of any kind”. Yet doctors find nothing neurologically amiss and tests show that the children’s brains respond to stimuli.

These Sleeping Beauties were, however, refugees with an uncertain future. Even those too young to recall their homelands heard horrific stories of brutality and persecution. Deprivation, uncertainty, stress and fear leave children vulnerable. They hear the “folk medical” view that they will not recover until they are granted asylum, which becomes a self-fulfilling prognosis. The children, O’Sullivan says, “are unconsciously playing out a sick role that has entered the folklore of their small community” (italics in original). Resignation syndrome allows children “to tell their story. Without it, they would be voiceless.”

Meanwhile, a dark stranger, usually wearing a hat, stalks the Miskito people, who are indigenous to Central America’s Mosquito Coast. The Miskito émigrés that O’Sullivan interviews in Texas explain that the stranger is the Devil come to abduct a victim. The reports are laced with eroticism, and young women, which the Devil prefers, are especially susceptible. The victim develops a condition called grisi siknis (“crazy sickness”; try saying it).

Grisi siknis begins with headaches, tiredness and dizziness, which develop into irrational behaviour. The afflicted experience seizures, report hallucinations and can become violent. Nevertheless, the hallucinations’ content varies between people and often reflects the person’s circumstances. One person eloquently describes grisi siknis as “like a dream that cleans from the inside”.

To make her point, O’Sullivan offers other striking illustrations, such as the supposed sonic attack on American embassies, and communities in parts of Colombia who link a spate of seizures among young women with the vaccine against human papilloma virus, which causes cervical cancer.

The moving comments O’Sullivan recounts remind us that most people concerned about vaccines don’t see a conspiracy behind every jab. They want to do the best for themselves and their children. But they don’t know what that is. Tellingly, misleading emotional messages bombarded the Colombians. It’s easier for non-scientific audiences to empathise with, say, an autistic child or young woman in a seizure’s grip than appreciate statistical analyses showing that vaccines are very safe.

Throughout the book, O’Sullivan explores the intersection between biology, anthropology and medicine. The “spiritual” Miskito blamed the Devil; people in the more “materialist” USA and post-Communist Kazakhstan blamed government and environmental poisons for their “mystery” illnesses.

O’Sullivan draws important lessons for healthcare professionals (HCPs) about reductionism’s limitations. Medicine is applied rationality. Yet rationality too often jettisons spirituality, which remains central to many people’s life experience, in the UK as much as on the Mosquito Coast. The Miskito tend to consult traditional healers rather than conventional medics to treat grisi siknis. Western HCPs experience problems “when something … doesn’t fit the disease pattern they are trained to treat”.

She argues that oversensitive diagnostic criteria mean that asymptomatic people undergo “regular check-ups and tests that they almost certainly didn’t need”.

I hope HCPs will listen to her eloquent clarion call. Indeed, The Sleeping Beauties is essential reading for forteans, HCPs and anyone feeling that medicine has yet to get to the root of their ill health.

★★★★★

The Book of the Magical Mythical Unicorn

Vakasha Brenman & Alfonso Colasuonno

O-Books 2020

Hb, 132pp, £10.99, ISBN 9781789042535

For the last few years the unicorn has been galloping to the forefront of our cultural consciousness; from stationery to soft toys, cushions to clothing, little has been left untouched by its magical hoofprints. This well researched little book covers more than 4,000 years of lore, legends and mythic or religious significance from the unicorn’s ancient beginnings to its presence in current popular culture, though with a focus very much on the former. (An interesting potential chapter could have looked at the unicorn’s relevance to contemporary LGBTQ+ culture.)

It spans the Lady and Unicorn Tapestries to Lady Gaga, crossing continents and cultures to uncover rich seams of unicorn history and mystery, including some detailed retellings of stories from Scotland to the Russian steppes.

As well as common knowledge about the unicorn, such as the apparent ability of its horn to purify water, the book explores more obscure beliefs, such as the unicorn’s significance in Chinese communication or how Christians saw it as an allegory for the Cross or even the embodiment of Christ himself. It follows myths as they cross heritages, from mediæval Russia to Africa, from the Ancient Greeks to the Celts, noting significant cultural differences. In European myths the unicorn was hunted for its powerful alicorn, whereas in Arabic societies it was not seen as a mere commodity but was instead revered.

This is a useful book for folklorists and storytellers. Whether or not you subscribe to its New Age beliefs, it has a heartfelt positive message that the “universe abounds with overflowing love for you” which is always nice to read, especially now. And if you only take one thing away from this book, perhaps it should be “never play leapfrog with a unicorn…” Olivia Armstrong

★★★★